


One by One

by isleofapplepies



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-02
Updated: 2013-03-02
Packaged: 2017-12-04 02:11:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/705313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isleofapplepies/pseuds/isleofapplepies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years after his fall Molly meets Sherlock again and Sebastian Moran does him a favour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One by One

 Eventually, when the clamour dies down, one by one they start slipping out of her life.      

                The first week leans on them the hardest, its weight breaking their bones. The name jumps out from television and newspaper headlines, always accompanied by that picture with a deerstalker, and the familiar scornful gaze of washed-out blue seems to be everywhere at once, observing London like it used to do every day of those past years when barely anyone knew who Sherlock Holmes was.

                The first week consists of nothing but mind-numbing racket and shovels of graveyard dirt. Days pass her by in burning flashes of colour as nights pour starlight into Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and each new dawn paints over the temporary refuge of sleep in hues of concrete, cabs and Thames.

                Molly wishes she could close her eyes for a moment and let out a whisper, nothing more but two carefully wrapped words delivered under the protection of thick walls and closed doors. But she knows there is no whisper low enough but absolute silence, and she knows the two words scorching the tip of her tongue have enough strength to tear down the walls, flee into the streets and light up a spark.

                The second she would again open up her eyes Baker Street would be ablaze and the figures of an army doctor, a landlady and a demoted DCI would collapse into themselves like cut-out dolls, crumpling while the flames licked holes into their fluttering paper hearts.

                Molly knows the price and she keeps her mouth shut.

                There are other words she tries to tell John Watson that first week but they all sound empty to her and she thinks he can tell. He answers every time, she gets a  _yes_  and a  _no_  and a  _thank you, Molly_  and a shrug accompanied by a shivering sigh but when he speaks John’s gaze doesn’t meet her eyes. Secretly she is grateful for that.

                But when that first week is buried with the man who brought it upon them, everything suddenly slows down and freezes. The tabloids find a new sensation to revel in, and London turns her back on them. Seconds pass and with them, somehow, whole months. Months of deafening silence, months of nothing but more dead bodies underneath her hands.

                It comes almost as a relief when John returns to Afghanistan.

                A part of her wants to believe it will help him cope after all her attempts have failed. It is what he used to do before he met him. Everyone has returned to what they were doing before, more or less willingly.     

                Molly is back in the morgue, almost shivering in her pink and green sweater. She’s always cold in here, even on a warm night like this. It’s June, two years after Sherlock’s supposed death and Molly remembers the date. Her hands are steady as she raises her mobile to her eyes to reread the curt message that brought her to Bart’s. But her fingers feel cold and clammy and Molly’s grip on the phone tightens. Wouldn’t want to drop it now, not when it’s the only physical proof she has that she did not make the story up to help her deal with grief. No, it happened just the way she remembers it.

                It did, didn’t it?

                Her eyes flick to the door for what feels like the thousandth time. It gleams warm shades of brown in the half-light of the morgue, holding back flashes of life darting through the hospital corridors. Sometimes she finds the glowing sparks of human lives overwhelming as they rush by, paying her maybe an occasional glance but rarely more. Sometimes she believes that’s a part of the reason why she finds presence of the dead comforting. The dead don’t have any other appointments, anywhere to be but here with her. They never listen but they hear everything. They never watch but they see everything.

                Like the man looking at her from across the room, his posture regal against the wooden background of the door. Molly lets out a rough gasp and her eyes widen.

                “Hello, Molly.”

                A nod is all she manages in response, and her hold on the phone loosens when her hand guides it safely into her pocket. The last time she heard that voice it was shrouded in mist and cigarette smoke, muttering “the flight will be delayed, what’s the point of staying here with me” when he meant to say goodbye.

                Molly feels the walls around her come alive with the echo of a familiar sound, listening intently. The air in the morgue shifts and breathes his presence in. Welcomes him like a broken bone welcomes its other half after a doctor aligns the jagged shards, and a raw sharp relief floods the body. It’s sickening.

                “It’s my night off,” Molly says, louder than she intended. “I had better things to do than spend it here.” She cannot tell why she’s angry, she just knows that even though her hands are perfectly still, inside she’s shaking. Underneath her ribs something trembles, thousands of little voices filling her lungs with words she did not know she wanted to get out.

                “No, you did not,” Sherlock Holmes says with his eyebrows raised, as if asking why she is lying to him. “You were getting ready for bed when I texted you. You even reapplied your mascara before coming to meet me. That’s a new layer, did not start crumbling yet.” He makes a few steps into the room, moving from the door and walking in a wide circle around the room like a visitor in an art gallery. When he glances at Molly and sees her incredulous expression he adds: “You rub your eyes often and smudge it within half an hour. I don’t see why you still bother buying it, it’s wasted on you.”

                Molly wants to ask why he bothered coming back. Instead she pulls her sleeves over her cold fists; the wool bundled up in her fingers. In spite of herself, Molly cannot take her eyes off the man, drinking in his presence with disbelief. Her life changed the day she helped him die. She knew it would but wasn’t prepared for the complete rearrangement of the soul that this secret did to her.

                “What are you wearing?” she shakes her head at last when she gets to the finer details of Sherlock’s return. The consulting detective is dressed in faded blue jeans and a grey hoodie. She thinks it makes him look smaller, paler, less distinct. “I didn’t know you had other clothes.”

                “I can hardly stroll about London dressed in my preferred attire,” Sherlock says with a note of impatience hanging from his last word like an icy raindrop.

                Molly smiles and runs her hand over the autopsy table she’s standing next to. He shouldn’t be in London at all, she thinks, remembering their last conversation two years ago. London was supposed to be erased from his mind for the rest of his days, never to be seen again. She wonders what changed.

                He did not, Molly is certain of that.   

                “What is this?” He takes something off of an unused shelf holding mostly a collection of anatomy books Molly has little use for but does not want to throw away. They’re her old textbooks, the pages warped in places from the number of highlighters that had found death in Molly’s pursuit of perfect knowledge. She has new copies at home, and the hospital provides an extensive body of literature should she need it. When she turns the shining white pages of new books she can see colours separating chunks of information; the bones and muscles and every brain region are burnt into her memory in neon pink and green and yellow.

                The thing in Sherlock’s hand is much smaller than the books and glistens faintly in the insufficient light. He knows what it is, and she knows what it is. Of course she knows, Molly was the one to put it there, right on top of  _Oxford Handbook of Clinical Pathology_.

                Her throat feels tight and dry when she forces the words out, thrusting them at Sherlock like a challenge. “It’s a ring.” She looks him in the eyes, lips tight, clammy fingers working the edges of her sleeves and plucking off bits of lint.

                Sherlock holds the ring between his index finger and thumb. It’s only Molly’s intent, dark stare that makes him stop inspecting it and turn his attention to the pathologist. For a moment Molly believes she sees a crack split open underneath his skin from the corner of his left eye to his upper lip, with broken shards of unspoken observations and other words (important, yet crippled) pushing to the surface through the gaping cut in Sherlock’s face.

                He sees it’s an engagement ring.                                                                                                            

                And he sees she’s not wearing it.

                Molly hasn’t worn it for some time and she wonders if he can tell how long. Mentally she supplies  _eleven months_. She keeps it tucked away here, on a pile of unused books, and doesn’t take it home even when her shift is over.

                He sees it all, and much more.

                The cracks running underneath Sherlock’s skin are deepening the longer they stand in silence, looking at each other. It’s through them that Molly sees everything in return, every day since the moment of his fall.

                “What happened, Molly?”

                Her anger dissolves, and her tension gives way to deep sorrow for the shadow of a man standing in front of her with a half-forgotten glimmer of happiness in his hand. The reason behind his question is unusually honest. She can tell, she saw him feign interest in her countless times and it was always for his personal gain. But the ring in his hand has nothing useful to offer.

                It’s just a story. Her story. A little piece of a mosaic of events that took place in London after the city was taken from him.    

                The shrug she gives is rather forced, accompanied by an uncertain laugh. “Oh,” she waves her hand, attempting to appear cheerful but feeling an undercurrent of hysteria bubbling to surface when she’s placed under his careful scrutiny. “It did not work out. He was— _Greg_  was offered a position in Manchester, a really good place, I urged him to take it. He wasn’t happy here.” Her smile is so wide and fake she feels the stretched skin of her lips chap. “And he did, he took it. But I wouldn’t leave London, I couldn’t... Well, that’s the short version, anyway. You wouldn’t be interested—” She takes a deep breath and her hand catches edge of a lab desk. “It did not work out,” she repeats.

                Slowly, Sherlock puts the ring back and Molly is grateful. For a second it seems he will say something, some twisted version of “ _I’m sorry_ ” wrapped in layers of disparagement of Molly’s sad little attempts at relationships and marriage as a whole.

                One by one, they slip out of her life. Sherlock was just the first to leave.

                No, she corrects herself. He did not leave. To leave suggests it was his decision. Sherlock was exiled.

                Sadness fills her ribcage like tar when he brings his eyes to hers again. It clings to her lungs and shortens her breath. Molly licks her dry lips and in a silent voice she says: “He’s not here. John. He doesn’t live at the flat anymore.”

                Sherlock gives a small nod. “I know all about John,” he says and Molly turns away from the two years of solitude carved into Sherlock’s face.

                Somewhere outside the morgue a door slams closed. Scratching the back of her hand she casts a blank gaze at the door leading to the hallway. A part of her hopes to catch a glimpse of a different face than the one in front of her.

                “But then,” she starts, studying the fabric of his hoodie. It suits him, a small voice in her head decides. Molly pretends she doesn’t hear it. “What have you come here for?”

                When there is no answer, Molly lifts her gaze from his chest to find Sherlock looking at her. His eyes are crystal clear and shining in his face like chips of ice, with two little Mollys staring from them back at her. He’s standing close to her, very close. Molly’s heart sputters in her chest before sending a rush of blood to colour her cheeks and remove any recollection of standing on a firm ground from her memory. Her eyes flick to the heavy shadows tugging the corners of his mouth downwards. She doesn’t want to lean forward yet she does it anyway.

                It’s then when Sherlock’s voice pushes her one, two, three steps back. “There’s a case I’m personally invested in which brings me to London.”

                Molly nods and rapidly blinks, staring at the lab desk on her right. She’s stupid,  _so stupid._  Of course he wouldn’t come back for  _her_. The thought slices through her brain with a steady scalpel of shame.

                “Oh. Of course. What else.” Her voice sounds a little high-pitched to her ears. Molly forces a smile and looks back at Sherlock who’s scanning the fixed windows high in the wall behind her, thankfully paying no attention to her awkward babbling.

                “Do you feel safe, Molly? In London, in your flat?”

                Molly doesn’t like the tone of his voice. She feels she’s being tested, or mocked. And she detests it. “Why? Yes. Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”

                A smirk plays on Sherlock’s lips as he scans their surroundings. “No, none at all.” Molly watches the amused smile morph into a cruel cold monster and she’d probably feel scared if it was directed at her. But it’s not, and she cannot fathom what’s hiding behind that frost radiating from his entire posture.

                Sherlock is angry, and it’s the rage building up in him that had brought him to the morgue tonight. But there’s more.

                “Your secret admirers are never of the nice, ordinary sort, are they?” he cuts his gaze to her at once. “But I suppose stalking and mental instability in general are in every secret admirer’s job description so it would be a contradiction.” He grins unexpectedly, like he would sometimes do when asking her a favour but this one is different. He’s asking her to  _know_. And all Molly can do is to shake her head. No, she has no idea what is going on here, and her mind is fuzzy with fatigue.

                His smile fades when he realizes there will be no brilliant contribution from her side and he rolls his eyes with a sigh. “You are being watched, Molly.”

                “What?” She cannot help herself but cast a quick gaze over her shoulder. Darkness breathes on her neck from distant corners. “Who would-- Why me? I’m no one.”

                “I believe we’ve already established that is simply not true. And unfortunately for you I’m not the only one who holds that opinion.”  

                The day Sherlock told Molly she counted is still fresh in her mind, for many reasons. Molly believes that day will still shine like a ruby hit by sunlight even when she’s old and wrinkly, her frail fingers sorting through yellowed pictures of memories she can no longer recover without visual aid. That day will bleed into every crevice of her mind, colours as vivid as if she was still in her early thirties and her cold fingers were digging into John Watson’s arm in front of the hospital when she ran outside to find him and almost lost her balance slipping on a pool of blood. Warm droplets splashed her bare ankles and she did not wash them off until much later that night, after she’d left Sherlock to his fate at the airport.

                Molly remembers her bones felt like carved from ice after holding John’s hand for a few seconds. She remembers the wrinkly skin of her fingers as she stood in her bathroom at four in the morning, hands submerged in the water in the washbasin where she was viciously rubbing red streaks staining a side of one trouser leg. The water was freezing and she lost feeling in her fingers. The stain did not wash off.

                “Who is it?” she asks.

                Sherlock rubs a side of his nose with two fingers. “There’s only one type of men you attract, and once again you caught the attention of the most dangerous man in London. This time, to my astonishment, without any active participation from your side.”

                Molly just stares at him, anxious and hurt and tired. So tired of everything this man hurled at her through the years. So tired of her own willingness to take it all, let his remarks, his callousness and even his enemies just stomp her into ground. “Jim is dead, Sherlock. It’s over.”

                Molly knows the second those words leave her mouth that they are not true, and there’s something rotten and sinister trying to drag her back. Silence in the morgue and the darkness seeping from its corners spill from under the very autopsy table where she held Jim’s silenced heart in her hands (she still remembers its steady beat underneath her hands pressed to his chest when his lips brushed hers in a dry, curt kiss), and dig their shadowy claws into her back.

                With Jim, or whoever he really was, it can never be truly over. The shackles of his actions bind them all to this place, chains rattling across the world, leading to Manchester, to Afghanistan, to whatever sun-deprived place Sherlock spent the last two years at, to Molly’s flat. They weave their way through London, all tied to one other in an unbreakable knot here, at this exact spot at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Every now and then Molly trips over someone else’s chains and the invisible iron web underneath her feet cackles venomously and a sweet whisper promises to catch her if she falls.

                Molly always pays careful attention to her steps after that.

                Sherlock does not seem to have noticed the chains himself but they are thick and laid closely to one another here. “Yes, the self-proclaimed king is dead,” he flicks his wrist with an air of impatience. As she watches him Molly listens for where his feet tread in the maze surrounding them. She thinks she hears soft ringing noise that Sherlock over the sound of his own voice cannot. “So when the throne is vacant the second most dangerous man in London has to move up a rank. Keep up, Molly.”

                She rubs her eyes to chase away the mist settling over her vision. Her fingers are covered with particles of black dust when she draws them away. Sherlock notices. She doesn’t. “Why target me? What could he possibly gain from that?” she asks.

                 Is he saying he came back to warn her? It still doesn’t make sense. It would mean he came back because of her. Molly had spent enough time in his presence to know Sherlock would never do that if he didn’t have to. Even if he cared he wouldn’t need to expose himself like this. She didn’t have to know he was in London. For some reason she did. For some reason he wished to meet her here, at this hour.

                Something reluctant moulds Sherlock’s face into a tight grimace. “I’ve been spotted.” he admits. “Someone recognized me.” Not even the faint dissatisfied growl tying his words together can drown out the grim tune shame plays in his voice. “And he is vengeful.”

                “Oh,” Molly says, fingers clutching end of her ponytail like roots of a tree weaving trough earth. “Surely it can’t be that bad,” she offers with a smile that smarts on her chapped lips like salt.

                Sherlock seems almost offended by her attempt to cheer him up. “Surely,” he repeats. “How naive of me to assume a woman who used to date London’s worst criminal would be alarmed when learning his henchman has been watching her through the crosshairs since Thursday.”

                Thursday.

                Molly does a quick math in her head to find out she’s been watched for four days and Sherlock knew about it. A shiver creeps down her spine and fear caresses the skin underneath her pink and green sweater. For the first time in her life Molly Hooper does not feel safe in her morgue.

                Whatever Sherlock’s reasoning for inviting her here was, Molly is willing to bet her entire career that she will not like it. She shuffles her feet. “Are you? Alarmed, I mean.”

                His left hand is travelling across the lab desk, fingers tapping the equipment they did not touch in years. “He’s only trying to get my attention. Make me come back to England.”

                “He’s not doing badly then.”

                Sherlock makes a low humming sound of agreement. “The question is how he found out about you.”

                Molly doesn’t have an answer. She knows what Sherlock’s really thinking about. About how she was involved, how James did not think her important enough to count her into his schemes. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

                She kept his secret even when it was tearing her apart. Even when she almost convinced herself that telling John, swearing him to secrecy, couldn’t cause any harm. She was mere days away from breaking her promise to Sherlock when things changed.

                “He got better eventually,” she hears her own voice and Sherlock’s eyes narrow on her face. “We had him over for dinner at our place a couple of times. He and Greg, they got really close.” A sincere smile makes her eyes shine and with a flinch Sherlock averts his gaze as if he couldn’t bear the sight. Molly hesitates before pressing on regardless. “It didn’t really take much to convince Greg you weren’t a fraud but for John it made all the difference. To have someone believe in him. In you.”

                “You didn’t?” Sherlock says tonelessly.

                “I did everything as we agreed,” she replies.

                “So what did you tell him?” The interest in his voice is an arm reaching for a poison only he can brew from Molly’s answer.

                “I told him I was sorry. That you fooled me too.”

                Sherlock nods, urging her on.

                “I told him you never wanted things to end like they did.” She bites the inside of her bottom lip. She kept that stance, did not waver. Not even when their difference of opinions finally drove a wedge between her and Greg Lestrade. “That you meant no harm to anyone.”

                “Did he say anything to that?”

                She lets out a shivering little laugh, remembering the cold, distant  _thank you, Molly_ she received. “No, nothing of importance. I don’t think he liked being in my company very much after we buried you.”

                Sherlock nods again. He’s been looking at the floor since their conversation turned to Dr. Watson, his expression impassive. “Good.”

                Molly’s hands find the lab table behind her and she leans against it, heaving an exhausted sigh. “What are we doing here?” she finally asks.

                He finally answers.

                “Waiting for your new suitor.”     

                Her eyes widen with shock. “What makes you think he will come here?” she lets out when she manages to gather enough air in her lungs to be able again to speak and breathe at the same time.

                Sherlock’s eyes leave the floor. “He won’t. He’s already here.” From under the lab desk he plucks something small and places it on top of the desk. Molly leans forward to take a closer look and recognizes it as a listening device.

                “I knew he would follow you if you left your flat unexpectedly,” Sherlock explains. “But he got here faster than I’d anticipated. Your phone is tapped, of course.”

                A flaring current of anger cuts right through her, drowning out all fear for a moment. This is her safe haven, her hiding place. No one has the right to violate it. Not some anonymous sniper, not a consulting detective. She snatches the device from the desk and stares at it, fuming. Her fingers curl over it as she considers crushing it into pieces. Instead she raises her eyes to Sherlock and asks: “Why now? Why did you wait four days for this... this... I still don’t know what this is.” The little metal disc burns her skin when she realizes each and every word she says carries through the night to ears of a man she doesn’t know. She presses her lips together in a pale line.

                In the following silence Sherlock reaches his open palm to Molly and she drops the device in it. Sherlock inspects it idly, almost without interest. “Because John returns home tomorrow,” he says. His voice is stripped of all emotion, not even his usual condescension and slivers of annoyance at the world in general can be found. When he speaks his words are as hollow as Dr. Watson’s were in those early days after Sherlock’s death. “His sister received the letter yesterday. As his closest living relative.”

                Something in Molly freezes.

                Sherlock is turning the listening device over in his hand.

                “Where is he?” Molly whispers with her gaze fixed to the item in his hand. She wonders what good it is for the sniper anymore since both of them seem to have lost command of their voices.

                “He’ll let us know when he’s ready to talk,” Sherlock says with the device close to his mouth. He lets out a long breath and casts a glance into the darkness behind Molly’s head. Somewhere outside the hospital, high above their heads, is a man holding a rifle and neither of them can ever see his face. Molly feels she’s about to throw up when a grin splits Sherlock’s face and he shakes his head. “I see,” he mutters and he sounds almost disappointed. “Obviously. Effective but not very sophisticated.”

                “Sherlock?”

                “I was hoping he would make himself known. This is a surprise.” A gaze of pale blue shoots over to Molly and with a smile that makes her want to shake him and drag him out of the morgue Sherlock adds in a clear loud voice: “He is nothing like Moriarty.”

                Merely a second passes between the sentence is uttered and Molly’s squeaky gasp shatters the remainders of peaceful darkness clinging to the hospital. Her hands jump to her face, nails digging into her skin. She feels painfully awake watching a shining red dot that has come out of nowhere to sit on Sherlock’s chest like a poisonous spider.

                Sherlock’s eyes drop to the ruby speck. He frowns at it and his lips twitch as if he simply encountered a gross mathematical error. “Case in point,” he mutters.

                Molly doesn’t understand, doesn’t care to understand. She wants him to stop looking so calm, she wants him to run. “Sherlock, what do I do?” she asks, voice shaking with urgency. Her hands fall to her throat, fingertips still clutching at her skin.

                He doesn’t move and neither does the dot on his chest. When her voice alerts him to her presence his eyes flutter closed for a second and a slow huff of air flows past his lips. His eyes find hers and Sherlock offers Molly a soft smile.

                He hesitates. Thinks. Then gives a small nod. “Step aside,” he almost whispers, “Now.”

                Her feet move of their own volition, and Molly’s body is pressed against a distant sink. Everything is a blur of dark greys, pale blues and burning reds. The dot darts to his forehead and Sherlock Holmes slips out of her life. 


End file.
